Rancher Desktop 1.7.0

This is the 1.7.0 release of Rancher Desktop, an open source desktop application to bring Kubernetes and container management to Mac, Windows, and Linux.

Important Updates

New Windows MSI installer

This allows enterprise rollout using group policy, or other system management systems. Work is still ongoing to make the MSI installer more configurable in the following releases, so that the initial Rancher Desktop configuration can be specified during install as well.

Allowed Images (Experimental)

The Allowed Images list lets the user control which images can be pulled from (and pushed to) registries. The images are configured via patterns in the Container Runtime preferences dialog. This is not a security barrier, but helps to conform to local policy, e.g. to prevent a helm install from pulling images from an unexpected source. Read more in the docs.

Please report any problems pulling (or pushing) images while the Allowed Images list is enabled as GitHub issues.

Reclaim unused space (macOS only)

On macOS, any unused disk space in the data volume (e.g. from deleted images) will be returned to the host when the application is closed.

Use compressed k3s images

For Kubernetes 1.21 and later, Rancher Desktop will now download (and cache) compressed image tarballs (e.g. 160MB instead of 470MB per version). It will continue to use uncompressed images already in the cache to avoid downloading them again unless you do a factory reset and delete all cached images.

Other updates and fixes

Help buttons in Preferences dialog

The Preferences dialog pages now have a help button (question mark in a circle) that will link directly to the corresponding manual page.

The online documentation is now versioned, so any links from the app will always go to the corresponding version of the documentation.

rdctl factory-reset

It is now possible to run a factory reset from the command line even when Rancher Desktop isn't running, so it can be used to clean up a broken installation that won't even start.

Updated Utilities

• docker 20.10.17 → 20.10.21
• docker-compose 2.11.1 → 2.14.0
• helm 3.9.4 → 3.10.2
• nerdctl 0.23.0 → 1.0.0
• trivy 0.32.0 → 0.35.0

Known Issues

Downgrading from 1.7

Downgrading from Rancher Desktop 1.7.0 to previous releases requires a factory reset (as usual) with the "Keep all cached images" option disabled because previous versions don't work correctly when they encounter compressed image tarballs in the cache. Details are in the FAQ.

On Windows, it is also possible that the privileged helper process needs to be uninstalled manually; see the docs for more details.

Kubernetes 1.26

Kubernetes 1.26 is only supported with the containerd engine in this release. Use Kubernetes 1.25 or earlier if you need to use the docker socket with the moby engine.

Allowed Images

When the Allowed Images list is enabled, all images from *.pkg.dev (the Google CDN) are implicitly allowed to enable pulling from Google Cloud registries.

The format used to specify image patterns is still subject to change.

Connect with the developers

• The issue queue

• Rancher Users Slack in the #rancher-desktop channel

Changelog

The full version changelog, from v1.6.2, can be found using GitHub compare and the details of the release can be found in the v1.7.0 milestone.

Rancher Desktop 1.6.2

This is the 1.6.2 release of Rancher Desktop, an open source desktop application to bring Kubernetes and container management to Mac, Windows, and Linux.

This patch release fixes an incompatibility with macOS Ventura

Rancher Desktop 1.6.0 and 1.6.1 do not work properly with macOS 13 Ventura. When running Kubernetes versions 1.24.* or 1.25.*, the VM would hang right away before becoming ready. With earlier versions, Kubernetes would work initially, but start hanging after restarting Rancher Desktop. This issue has been fixed.

There are no other changes in this release compared to 1.6.1.

Connect with the developers

• The issue queue

• Rancher Users Slack in the #rancher-desktop channel

Changelog

The full version changelog, from v1.6.1, can be found using GitHub compare and the details of the release can be found in the v1.6.2 milestone.

Rancher Desktop 1.6.1

This is the 1.6.1 release of Rancher Desktop, an open source desktop application to bring Kubernetes and container management to Mac, Windows, and Linux.

This patch release fixes 3 regressions in the 1.6.0 release

• On Windows, the host.rancher-desktop.internal and host.docker.internal names did not resolve.

• On macOS, the bridged interface was not being used, even when running with administrative rights, and only port forwarding to localhost was active.

• On macOS and Linux, upgrades from a previous release did not update all files inside the VM. In particular, nerdctl would stay at the previous version (e.g. 0.22.2 in Rancher Desktop 1.5.1) instead of being upgraded to 0.23.0.

Connect with the developers

• The issue queue

• Rancher Users Slack in the #rancher-desktop channel

Changelog

The full version changelog, from v1.6.0, can be found using GitHub compare and the details of the release can be found in the v1.6.1 milestone.

Rancher Desktop 1.6.0

This is the 1.6.0 release of Rancher Desktop, an open source desktop application to bring Kubernetes and container management to Mac, Windows, and Linux.

Important Updates

Forwarding ports to external interfaces on Windows

Automatic port forwarding has been re-implemented by Rancher Desktop and no longer relies on the builtin forwarding from WSL. It is now possible to specify the interface to bind to, and binds to 0.0.0.0 (all host interfaces) by default. To keep a port bound to localhost only, you have to specify it explicitly:

docker run -d -p 127.0.0.1:8081:80 nginx

Port forwarding now works the same way on macOS and Windows (Linux does not yet support binding to external ports).

Note that you will still need to open up the port in the firewall to allow other machines on the local network to access it.

New Diagnostics feature

Rancher Desktop has a new Diagnostics tab. If there are any failed tests, It will display a red badge with the number of failures in the left-hand menu. This is supposed to work like the "Check Engine" light in a car: to alert you to potential issues with Rancher Desktop or your environment. You can "mute" diagnostics that are not applicable to your situation.

In this release, we only have a handful of diagnostics related to PATH settings and the online state of the host machine. We will add more diagnostics in the future.

Experimental support for faster ingress on macOS

When running with administrative privileges, Rancher Desktop will create a bridged interface on the local network for ingress using a separate IP address from the host machine. This functionality is provided by the vde_vmnet daemon.

The new socket_vmnet daemon has supported 2 to 3 times the throughput of vde_vmnet during testing. However, we found during testing that VMNET may get locked up, and the only way to recover was to reboot the host. Therefore the new daemon must be enabled manually right now:

rdctl api --method PUT --body '{"kubernetes":{"experimental":{"socketVMNet":true}}}' settings

Please file a Github issue including log files if you test the new socket_vmnet daemon and run into any problems!

Updated Utilities

• docker-buildx has been upgraded from 0.8.2 → 0.9.1
• docker-compose has been upgraded from 2.6.1 → 2.11.1
• helm has been upgraded from 3.9.1 → 3.9.4
• nerdctl has been upgraded from 0.22.0 → 0.23.0
• trivvy has been upgraded from 0.30.0 → 0.32.0

Important bug fixes

Updated DNS resolver

There have been fixes to the DNS resolver on all platforms regarding truncated responses.

On Windows, we discovered that due to a configuration error the 1.5.x builds did not include the DNS bug fixes we had developed for it, so there a multiple other DNS related fixes in this Windows version. Please re-test if you had problems with DNS and create/update Github issues if the problems still persist!

Factory Reset on Windows no longer restarts Rancher Desktop automatically

This makes it possible to use it to remove (most of) the data files installed by Rancher Desktop without them being recreated immediately.

Changelog

The full version changelog, from v1.5.1, can be found using GitHub compare and the details of the release can be found in the v1.6.0 milestone.

Rancher Desktop 1.5.1

This is the 1.5.1 release of Rancher Desktop, an open source desktop application to bring Kubernetes and container management to Mac, Windows, and Linux. The patch release mainly contains fixes to below bugs:

• Automatic forwarding of NodePorts to the host not working with recent releases of Kubernetes
• Problems with pushing images to Docker Hub using nerdctl
• Issue running amd64 images on Mac M1

Known Issues

• There's an inconsistent issue related to running nerdctl commands. Please check #2689 for more details and a quick workaround.

You can connect with the developers via:

• The issue queue

• Rancher Users Slack in the #rancher-desktop channel

Changelog

The full version changelog, from v1.5.0, can be found using GitHub compare and the details of the release can be found in the v1.5.1 milestone.

Rancher Desktop 1.5.0

This is the 1.5.0 release of Rancher Desktop, an open source desktop application to bring Kubernetes and container management to Mac, Windows, and Linux. The release contains some new features along with various bug fixes.

Important Updates

Preferences dialog

Rancher Desktop now has a dedicated preferences dialog containing application, virtual machine, container engine, and Kubernetes settings. Changes are applied only after the "Apply" button is pressed, minimizing the time it takes to switch between configurations.

Offline operation

Rancher Desktop has been updated to work better in an offline environment. During initial setup a network connection is required to e.g. download the Kubernetes version to be deployed. But if Rancher Desktop is later run offline, then only the already cached versions will be available, and there should no longer be any delays or errors trying to fetch additional information online.

This mode can also be used to setup air-gapped operation. Documentation for this is still being prepared.

Other changes

• The host resolver (DNS) on Windows is no longer considered experimental and is now enabled by default. It helps to resolve hostnames over VPN connections.

• The "Port Forwarding" feature now allows the user to pick a specific port instead of choosing one randomly.

Updated utilities

• docker has been upgraded to 20.10.17.
• docker-compose has been upgraded to 2.6.1.
• nerdctl has been upgraded to 0.22.0.
• helm has been upgraded to 3.9.1.
• trivy has been upgraded to 0.30.0.

Known Issuses

• Due to upstream Kubernetes changes the automatic forwarding of NodePorts to the host no longer works for Kubernetes 1.22.10+, 1.23.7+, or any 1.24.1+ release (this also affects all previous Rancher Desktop releases).

• It is not possible to push images to Docker Hub with nerdctl.

Both of these issues will be addressed in a patch release later in August.

You can connect with the developers via:

• The issue queue
• Rancher Users Slack in the #rancher-desktop channel

Changelog

The full version changelog, from v1.4.1, can be found using GitHub compare and the details of the release can be found in the v1.5.0 milestone.

Rancher Desktop 1.4.1

This is the 1.4.1 release of Rancher Desktop, an open source desktop application to bring Kubernetes and container management to Mac, Windows, and Linux. The release contains some new features along with various bug fixes.

Important Updates

• Rancher Desktop now ships with registry credential helpers and configures them automatically: It uses pass on Linux, osxkeychain on macOS, and wincred on Windows. The ecr-login helper is also included but not automatically configured.

  For nerdctl (which has to run inside the VM for technical reasons) a credential forwarder will redirect all credential requests to the helper on the host, so no credentials are installed inside the VM.

• The Images list now supports bulk deletion of images.

• Various bug fixes to the still experimental host resolver (DNS). We expect to be able to make it the default resolver in the 1.5.0 release.

Updated utilities

• docker has been upgraded to 20.10.16.
• docker-buildx has been upgraded to 0.8.2.
• docker-compose has been upgraded to 2.5.1.
• nerdctl has been upgraded to 0.20.0.
• helm has been upgraded to 3.9.0.
• trivy has been upgraded to 0.28.0.

You can connect with the developers via:

• The issue queue
• Rancher Users Slack in the #rancher-desktop channel

Changelog

The full version changelog, from v1.3.0, can be found using GitHub compare and the details of the release can be found in the v1.4.1 milestone (1.4.1 is the first public release from the release-1.4 branch).

Rancher Desktop 1.3.0

This is the 1.3.0 release of Rancher Desktop, an open source desktop application to bring Kubernetes and container management to Mac, Windows, and Linux. The release contains some new features along with various bug fixes.

Important Updates

• On macOS and Linux, supporting utilities are no longer symlinked into /usr/local/bin, but into ~/.rd/bin which can be added to the PATH automatically or manually in the shell profile files.

• On macOS Rancher Desktop can be configured to run without administrative rights, in which case it will not create the routable interfaces. It will also not be able to create a symlink at /var/run/docker.sock, but will set up an alternate docker context.

• nerdctl has been upgraded to 0.19.0.

• helm has been upgraded to 3.8.2.

Experimental Features

• The rdctl CLI remains experimental and has added new subcommands:

  • rdctl start --kubernetes-version 1.23.1 will start RD if it isn't running, or modify the configuration to match.
  • rdctl shell runs commands or opens an interactive shell inside the Rancher Desktop VM.

• An alternative DNS resolver for Windows has been implemented. It should support DNS lookup over VPN connections. It has to be enabled manually by editing an internal configuration file.

• On macOS an alternative file sharing mechanism using 9p instead of reverse-sshfs has been implemented. It is disabled by default. Talk to us on Slack if you want to help us testing it.

Important Fixes

• The metrics performance issue when using the moby runtime has been fixed.
• Certificate handling on Windows has be fixed to deal with large numbers of certificates.
• Image scanning now displays all the reported vulnerabilities.

You can connect with the developers via:

• The issue queue
• Rancher Users Slack in the #rancher-desktop channel

Changelog

The full version changelog, from v1.2.1, can be found using GitHub compare and the details of the release can be found in the v1.3.0 milestone.

Rancher Desktop 1.2.1

Rancher Desktop 1.2.1 is a security (patch) release. Rancher Desktop is an open source desktop application to bring Kubernetes and container management to Mac, Windows, and Linux. The release contains a bug fix where steve, an internal component of Rancher Desktop, was sometimes causing a firewall rule prompt. More detail is available in the advisory.

You can connect with the developers via:

• The issue queue
• Rancher Users Slack in the #rancher-desktop channel

Changelog

The full version changelog, from v1.2.0, can be found using GitHub compare and the details of the release can be found in the v1.2.1 milestone.

Rancher Desktop 1.2.0

⚠️ This release includes a security vulnerability. Please use the fixed version 1.2.1 instead! ⚠️

This is the 1.2.0 release of Rancher Desktop, an open source desktop application to bring Kubernetes and container management to Mac, Windows, and Linux. The release contains some new features along with various bug fixes.

Feature Preview

This release includes 2 new features still considered experimental:

• Rancher Dashboard for kubernetes

  It can be opened from the system tray icon menu and runs in a separate window.

• Commandline access via rdctl program

  This is still a prototype with limited functionality. Examples:

  • rdctl list-settings
  • rdctl set --container-engine docker --kubernetes-version 1.21.2
  • rdctl shutdown

  Long term all functionality should be available both through the UI and the CLI.

Important Updates & Fixes

• Works with macOS 12.3
• Support for kubernetes 1.24 on docker via cri-dockerd
• DNS improvements on all platforms (work-in-progress)
• nerdctl updated to 0.17.1

You can connect with the developers via:

• The issue queue
• Rancher Users Slack in the #rancher-desktop channel

Changelog

The full version changelog, from v1.1.1, can be found using GitHub compare and the details of the release can be found in the v1.2.0 milestone.